Police officers are using coronavirus regulations to break up socially distanced demonstrations even though the country’s largest police force has conceded in a landmark legal case that people have a right to protest during the current national lockdown.
The Metropolitan police admitted in the high court on Friday that it had discretion on how to respond to protests and it could not impose a blanket ban on demonstrations, after the force was challenged by the organisers of the planned vigil to remember Sarah Everard in south London.
As anger mounts over the police’s failure to find a way to hold the vigil safely and concerns grow about the government’s proposed permanent restrictions on the right to protest, other campaigners have come forward to reveal how the police have been using these wide-ranging emergency powers to clamp down on all forms of protests since January.
Analysis by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, reveals there have been at least nine high-profile instances of police using Covid regulations against demonstrators, including two asylum seekers protesting outside Napier barracks in Folkestone, Kent and a woman fined £500 for organising a protest after the death of a man released from police custody in Cardiff.
The human rights group Liberty said the police were too often indiscriminately using Covid rules to disperse responsible, low-risk protests, arrest people and issue extortionate fixed penalty notices to organisers regardless of the risk to public health.
“Even in the midst of a pandemic people should not be criminalised en masse for exercising their fundamental right to protest,” said Gracie Bradley, Liberty interim director.
Union activists, environmental campaigners and squatters and have all faced fines and even arrest by officers for taking to the streets in the current national lockdown.
A nurse who organised a socially distanced protest against low pay in the NHS was issued with a £10,000 fine last weekend. Karen Reissmann, a mental health nurse, said she had carried out a risk assessment and the 40 or so people attending were standing at least two metres apart divided by cones laid out in St Peter’s Square in Manchester. “We are health workers and we’ve seen what Covid does. I had no intention of being responsible for anybody catching Covid,” she said. “But the police had no interest in whether the protest was safe. They just gave me a fine.”
Reissmann, who ended the protest as soon as she was instructed, added she planned to appeal against the fine, which is currently being reviewed . “Health workers are now frightened of opposing the 1% pay offer. Even if I win on appeal the damage has been done because people will worry about protesting.”
Last week, Avon and Somerset police arrested three squatters under Covid regulations in an empty office building in Bristol, while upwards of 30 officers, included some on horseback, told 100 supporters, who had gathered outside to stop the eviction, they were breaching Covid rules.
One of squatters, Tom, who had been living in the squat for two months, said he had been made homeless in the middle of a pandemic. “The Covid laws were being manipulated by the police,” he said. “When they run out of reasons to arrest someone, they use Covid.”
Anti-HS2 protesters have also been issued with fines for breaching Covid regulations. Michael Truesdale was fined after bailiffs removed him from a tree in Euston Square Gardens, London, where he was protesting with just one other person. “We were 70ft up and had masks on,” he said. “The officers gave us a choice between taking a fine and getting arrested. I took the fine and my partner got arrested. When he got in front of a judge, the case was thrown out.”
Police have even been willing to use Covid powers against lawyers. Paul Powlesland, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, was fined when he visited the anti-HS2 protest to speak to one of his clients in a tunnel under the square. He said officers first threatened him with arrest before issuing a £200 with Covid powers. “I had no choice but to leave and therefore I couldn’t get the instructions I needed from my client,” he said.
Powlesland added he had also been threatened with Covid fines during protests against the removal a cycle lane in Kensington, west London and the felling of a 100-year-old poplar tree in Wandsworth, southwest London. “Every single time I’ve been on any protests in the past few months I’ve been threatened with a Covid fine – and yet I have not been threatened with a fine at any other time,” he said. “They are abusing the law to clamp down on protests.”
The Met police said the high court ruling confirmed it “may conclude that attendance at a large gathering could be unlawful”. It added that: “Only a few weeks ago our NHS was at breaking point, we cannot risk undoing all the hard work to reduce the infection rate.”
Greater Manchester police said: “Under the current national restrictions, which started on 4 January 2021, protests are illegal. This is a change to previous restrictions which allowed protests to take place.” It added that the organiser of the nurses’ pay protest did not listen to its advice. “We are obliged to act as their actions result in a clear breach of the regulations and are going against the advice of the government in protecting people from the spread of the virus,” it said.
Avon and Somerset police said the premises where the squatters were fined was not considered a dwelling. “As such, it was deemed that those inside were in breach of Covid-19 regulations, namely, contravening a requirement to not participate in an indoor gathering or two or more people,” it said.
